Panamahut – straw for our heads

Your sun hat lies her! Regardless of whether you wear cheap china from china or one of the highest quality copies that quickly costs over 10,000 euros. The largest classic in southern headgear practice, the Panama, does not hide several truths: it does not stand for the upper middle of the day in the summer freshness or for the desire to tropent, Ernest Hemingways. Nor does it belong in the elite tennis culture of the 1920s, and a pure men’s accessory is certainly not the characteristic of the “man of world”. Even the name is misleading, because Panama bag, the real ones, are never made in Panama. The hat is an old load of colonial patronization. Western large powers have torn and reinterpreted the airy, light braids of indigenous cultures.

The actual home of the hat legend is 1000 kilometers away from Panama in Ecuador. In the western coastal provinces of the small Andean state, the toquilla palm grows, an endemic (i.e. exclusively there). Originals can be rolled up on the size of a cigar.

In the early 16th century, the first Spaniards reached today’s Ecuador on their looting trains. When they saw the headgear of the indigenous population, the invaders felt more reminded of the hoods of Catholic sisters. The name of the toquilla palm comes from the Spanish word toquilla, which refers to a triangular head or shoulder cloth.

Archaeological finds suggest that prehistorical societies such as the Manteña Guancavilca culture already knew how to use the toquilla fibers for their headscharts around 1500 years ago. From the 17th century, a special skill for the palm leaf alley developed in the small town of Montecrristi, which spoke around to Europe. The place is now considered a Panama hotspot, the designation of origin is a seal of approval.

But what did the geographical misalignment of the Montecristi hat have? A monarch, which is often politically off, ensured this: Napoleon III. Napoleon Bonaparte’s failed nephew had heard of the fabulous hats from Ecuador and had a copy coming to Paris. This was carried out because it was shipped over Central America, the customs stamp of Panama and from then on was called Panamaut. That was the mistake in the world. A status symbol became a hat that protected small farmers and forced laborers at the Plantagen-Maloche. Wherever white elites under ceiling fans sipped rum cocktails, the Panama was part of it.

Although the hat had wrongly received its name, the construction of the Panama Canal fueled the career of the portable shadow dispenser. When US President Theodore Roosevelt inspected the construction site between the oceans in 1906, was on his head, Hahaha, a Panamahut! It is hardly better to be dressed: Visit an imperial major project in imperial outfit. “A symbol of colonialism that divides the country in half,” said the British author Graham Greene the channel. The promise to involve the local population in the profits was broken. Instead, the region still suffers from the ecological consequences and the political influence of Washington. In this respect, there is less colonial -romantic chic in the hat to the channel than a system of exploitative foreign rule.

In the end, Ecuadorian palm farmers and straw braiders go out as empty as the residents of the Panama Canal. The big profits are cut in western importers and luxury dealers. Isn’t the history of the Panamaute a typical colonial tragedy? An indigenous civilization is cheated on their complete legacy. The natural resource, the ancient knowledge of cooking and smoking the palm leaves, sophisticated braided art – European taste and capitalist trade logic have taken everything. The indigenous original form of the hat has largely disappeared. It has long been based on typological models from western fashion, translated into the breathable palm straw language of equatorial widths.

There is the Panama as a melon, as a cowboy hat or as the “circular saw” Venetian Gondolieri. Models for women are also available. Almost all variants initially emerged in Europe! The fedora panama or the trilby panama (the smaller brother of the fedora with a shorter clamp) are particularly iconic. Both were originally made of felt. For a long time they belonged to the cliché picture of the cinema gate, also Al Capone swore to the Fedora.

Is that a coincidence? Not if you add imperialism in Hannah Arendt’s theory of imperialism: the colonial entrepreneur, it says there, is a connection between “gentleman and criminal”. Many have put these historical covers away from the Panama away. Even an anti-imperialist like Erich Honecker reached the Ecuadorian straw when traveling to Cuba or on hot East Berlin days.

Hippie era, punk and grunge have in the meantime seemed dusty, but at the latest since the turn of the millennium, the summer classic has been back. This can be observed on celebrities like Johnny Depp, Daniel Craig or Kate Hudson. This revival undoubtedly favors a climate disaster that requires better sun protection far to Northern Europe. So if you find baseball caps too proletarian, fishing hats too petty-bourgeois and XXL-Sombreros too touristically touristically, you have hardly any other choice than put on a panama. A real with a false name or a really wrong from China.